The GOP polling debacle

For Republicans, one of the worst parts of the GOP’s 2012 trouncing was that they didn’t see it coming.

Top party strategists and officials always knew there was a chance that President Barack Obama would get reelected, or that Republicans wouldn’t gain control of the Senate. But down to the final days of the national campaign, few anticipated the severe setbacks that Republicans experienced on Nov. 6.

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The reason: Across the party’s campaigns, committees and super PACs, internal polling gave an overly optimistic read on the electorate. The Romney campaign entered the last week of the election convinced that Colorado, Florida and Virginia were all but won, that the race in Ohio was neck and neck and that the Republican nominee had a legitimate shot in Pennsylvania.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee consistently had a more upbeat assessment of races in North Dakota and Montana, among others, than their Democratic counterparts. One GOP poll even showed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock holding even with his opponent, even as public polls showed the embattled Republican hemorrhaging support. A Republican poll taken by Susquehanna Polling and Research showed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith leading Democratic Sen. Bob Casey by 2 points a few weeks before the election; Casey won by 9 points.

In the House, where the Republicans easily held on to their majority, the GOP still lost several races they expected to win. Utah Democrat Jim Matheson, who was down 15 points in a September poll by the firm Public Opinion Strategies, won by a single point. New York Rep. Tim Bishop, who trailed by 5 in a mid-October McLaughlin & Associates poll, won by just over 4 points. Another poll showed Massachusetts Rep. John Tierney trailing his GOP challenger by 17 points less than a month before the vote; Tierney won by a point. California GOP Rep. Mary Bono Mack, who led her opponent by double digits in a mid-October survey by consultant Arthur Finkelstein, lost by nearly 3 points. In Illinois’s 12th Congressional District and New York’s 18th Congressional District, private Republican polls left the party surprised by Democratic wins.

Now that that mountain of rosy polling data has come crashing down, Republicans are beginning to comb through the wreckage to try to figure out where they went wrong.

“On the Republican side, this was the worst cycle ever for polling and there’s nothing that even comes close to it,” said GOP strategist Curt Anderson, who helms the media and polling firm OnMessage. “It was a colossal disaster and it wasn’t confined to the presidential campaign.”

Anderson said the proliferation of different groups — campaigns, outside spenders, etc. — polling the same states had made it exceptionally difficult to decode the political state of play and develop strategy accordingly.

“It seemed like you had people taking polls in different universes at the same time,” Anderson said. “Three, four points [of disagreement], that’s the margin of error, but I’m talking 10-, 15-point differences.”

It’s not as if the party is totally at a loss to explain where it went off course. Sources familiar with Romney’s polling say that it underestimated the Democrats’ 6-point voter identification edge, nationally, and put far too much stock in what one Republican operative called “false signs of Republican enthusiasm.” Multiple Republican pollsters also acknowledged that they misjudged how many young people and minorities would show up to vote.

It's hard to argue with miserable failure. If I were a campaign in the market for a pollster, Newhouse, Goeas, and McLaughin would not be called, and would not have their phone calls returned.

Pollsters aren't paid to make their employers feel good. They're paid to present a realistic picture of how the candidate is doing at any given point in time so that the candidate's tactics can be tweaked in the days leading up to the elections. The GOP might as well have just hired the guy at unskewedpolls.com, who basically just made up his "polling model" as he went along. He would've been a lot cheaper, and at about the same level of accuracy.

For people interested in how the public polls did, Nate Silver has ranked them at

http://fivethirtyeight....

As I expected, Rasmussen is near the bottom. I attribute this to Rasmussen's cell phone problem. If he doesn't change his methods his polls will get worse and worse. The surprise to me in this cycle has been Gallup. Their polls have been awful this election, and I think they contributed greatly to the GOP's rosy-lensed alternate universe with respect to the electorate. I don't know how they did it or why, but they are at the bottom of the list, even worse than Rasmussen.

Who is suprised that the GOP leaning pollsters (Ras et al) missed this by a mile. When has the GOP and Conservative believed in any objective fact? If the FACT doesn't comport with preconcieved notions, then it is false hence a liberal ploy to fool everyone and they can't fall for that.

My advice for my Con/GOP friends is that you really need to watch channels other than FOX and Con leaning media outlet. You especially need to realize that what you hear on talk radio is most often meant to keep you tuned in. Why you may ask? Then they can sell you products as you are a cultivated market. Truth and facts are an afterthought on those radio shows.

It could be human nature, in that once you are deeply involved and dedicated to a political position, that you may unknowingly filter out a good part of opposing political views and opinion. After all, once so engaged we, in many ways become unwitting slaves to our own innate assumptions.

I think a generous dollop of group psychology played a part here along with plenty of wishful thinking. Additionally, there was a huge amount of male ego investment here as evidenced by the hundred multi-million dollar bets by Messrs. Adelson and the brothers Koch.

Small wonder Gov Romney’s victory party was awash in weeping adults. But, as they say, the party is over, and no fat lady ever sang.

There really is no better way than a fake poll to convince a wealthy donor to fund your candidate's last two weeks of paid media. If you - as the candidate's paid media consultant - make a few bucks on it, well that's just the American way. Don't worry, there will be plenty of wealthy novices lining up to contribute again two years from now to keep the grift alive and well.

I will make one somewhat backhanded excuse for the horrible, wretched, abysmal performance of the GOP internal pollsters. You can't poll for ground game. You can try to determine how much weight to give to the likelihood of any given segment of the population, but all you have to work with is the numbers you get from the specific questions you ask.

But still, the public pollsters and the Democratic pollsters pretty much nailed it on average, and the GOP pollsters seem to have been polling either with a time machine, or on some other planet.

"The popular vote figured out to a 2% margin. That is hardly a "blowout" in anyone's mind.

A handful of swing states decided the election, and they were close, as well."

That's not the point, Beem. The GOP hired internal pollsters (and strategists) who presented them with wildly inaccurate and optimistic polls. If I lost all but one swing state, and nearly every high profile Senate race, I'd be considering it a blowout, though.

Have you made note that of the last six presidential elections, the GOP lost the popular vote in all but one? And that the electoral college map has been steadily sliding away from the GOP since 1990? If I were in that state I'd want good, accurate, hard-nosed pollsters and strategists. Not wishful thinking and fairy dust.

Isn't polling supposed to tell you who is and isn't going to show up, etc? (Rhetorical question)

Much of the premise being discussed by the GOP about the polling in the article is fundamentally wrong.

When the GOP howled about the polls being biased in September, Nate Silver, Gallup & Mark Blumenthal (Pollster.com) all weighed in. In fact, Mark cited articles he wrote on the subject when this came up in 2004.

A good poll simply answers the questions about where people are on an issue. It isn't rocket science to design and setup a poll that will give one objective and meaningful results.

So only one of two things happened:

1) The Republican pollsters are or have become incompetent with polling

2) The Republicans digesting the polls knew what was going on but didn't want to let on out of fear their campaign funding would dry up.

Karl Rove has been at this game and interpreting polls since the late 70s. I choose door #2

I took a couple courses of statistics when doing graduate work and I remember one saying that the professor kept bringing up. "Garbage in, Garbage out."

Polls are only as good as the techniques used to take them. Screw that up and anything can happen.

During the campaign, it was clear that Republican polls did not jive with other polls that were out there. I wonder why they did not question their own polls instead of lambasting the others.

In the end, the right man won the election. I'm glad the Democrats retained control of the Senate and I hope the Republicans in the House are willing to work with the other two. Congress needs to get something done and I'm tired of legislative constipation.

The way GOP looked at polling data is only a symptom of the way they treat the scientific process. The pick and choose the data they like or confirms their faith. The scientific process requires one to put their preferences and biases aside. It doesn't always give you the answer you want, and it doesn't necessarily tell you what the correct course of action should be. For example, our judicial system is based on the scientific process; it help you determine the guilt or innocence of a person, but it doesn't tell you whether to incarserate or execute a criminal. The process is not perfect or flawless, and sometimes, for various reasons, a question is not fully testable, so faith still has a place in decision making. But I find the GOP, institutionally speaking, hold faith over evidence in too much of their policies and practices.